#rio

Society will develop a new kind of servitude which covers the surface of society with a network of complicated rules, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate. It does not tyrannise but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd. ↗

— Alexis de Tocqueville

#government #serious #democracy

There were mysterious questions, but a mysterious answer was a contradiction in terms. ↗

— Eliezer Yudkowsky

#mysterious #question #science #science

It is of great consequence to have previously determined the concept that one wants to elucidate through observation before questioning experience about it; for one finds in experience what one needs only if one knows in advance what to look for. ↗

— Immanuel Kant

#education

I watched the enormity of the clouds for several minutes. What I wanted to experience in the water, I realized, was how life of the reef was layered and intertwined. I now had many individual pieces at hand: named images, nouns. How were they related? What were the verbs? Which syntaxes were indigenous to the place? I asked a dozen knowledgeable people. No one was inclined to elaborate- or they didn’t know. “Did you see the octopus?” Someone shouted after the dive. Yes, I thought, but who among us knows what it was doing? What else was THERE, just then? WHY? ↗

— Barry Lopez

#diving #mystery #ocean #reefs #experience

People go to the movies instead of moving. Hollywood characters are supposed to have all the adventures for everybody in America, while everybody in America sits in a dark room and watches them have them. ↗

— Tennessee Williams

#adventure #audience #hollywood #movement #movies

Our code is different from the warrior code. It reaches across boundaries. To us, every cat is simply that — a cat, with the same right to life as any other. We made a promise to heal and protect, remember? ↗

— Erin Hunter

#protect #warrior-cats #life

Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever puts one down without the feeling of disappointment. ↗

— Charles Lamb

#curiosity #disappointment #down #ever #excite

Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least. ↗

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

#mercy

It's a lovely answer and takes me entirely by surprise. I hadn't realized we were having a serious conversation, or I think I would've given a better reply when he asked me. ↗

— Maggie Stiefvater

#reply #seriousness #surprise #love

I loved a maid fair as summer, with sunlight in her hair. ↗

— George R.R. Martin

#love